Donald Trump declared “the golden age of the Middle East” had begun, announcing peace, after visiting Egypt and Israel. He was surrounded by Arab, Muslim, and European leaders, including Macron, Meloni, Starmer, and Sanchez.
“The Trump Declaration for Lasting Peace and Prosperity” bears the signatures of Trump; Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi; Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan; and Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani.
Strikingly, neither the Israeli government nor the Hamas leadership, the main protagonists, were present, nor did they sign the declaration. This demonstrates that the Zionist state itself does not accept the “peace plan,” which lacks a solid foundation.
The IWU-FI says this apparent peace agreement has nothing to do with peace, but is an attempt to impose a new colonisation of Gaza. It is a 20-point agreement that seeks to establish a protectorate of imperialism and the genocidal state of Israel.
It is also an attempt by Trump to save Netanyahu amid the enormous and growing global isolation of Israeli Zionism. Millions are taking to the streets to repudiate the genocide and support the Palestinian cause. There were two unprecedented general strikes in Italy (September 22 and October 3), with mass marches, to support the Palestinian people and in defence of the historic Global Sumud Flotilla. Historic because, for the first time, over 50 ships and 500 crew members from 44 countries took part. An IWU-FI delegation was part of it. Half a million people mobilised in London on 12 September. A strike is taking place in Spain on 15 October. Trump felt compelled to make the “peace plan” manoeuvre, pretending to portray the United States and himself as the “guarantors of peace” in the Middle East. In reality, they are the historical supporters of the genocidal state of Israel and promoters of all imperialist military aggression in the region and the world.
Such is the crisis facing Israel and its criminal government that, after two years of bombing, mass destruction, and thousands of Palestinian deaths, it could not declare victory. And Trump had to invent a supposed peace plan. The almost empty UN session staged the greatest international isolation in Israel’s history, and it appears to be a lifeline for Netanyahu. The growing pressure on governments from the global mass movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people, demanding that they isolate the genocides and their accomplices. The plan appeared as the Gaza City deadline passed, with troops failing to conquer it, free hostages, and showing signs of exhaustion.
Trump himself said it openly in his speech to the Israeli parliament: “A Gaza in rubble and children dying of hunger had left the name of the Israeli prime minister so in tatters that there was no choice but to put an end to it. I told him: ‘Bibi (Netanyahu), you will be remembered for this (the peace plan) much more than if you had continued with this like this, killing, killing'” (Clarin, Argentina, 14 October 2025).
The first phase of the “peace plan” is a truce with a ceasefire, the release of the hostages, of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, the withdrawal of the Zionist army from 47% of Gaza, and the entry of humanitarian aid. Thousands of Palestinians have taken to the streets to celebrate the ceasefire, and immediately, hundreds of thousands have begun their return to northern Gaza.
The Palestinians are taking a breather, while the death toll from the murderous machine that has resorted to every crime imaginable grows. These events are a small but important victory for the Palestinian people, who are suffering genocide, famine, and a plan of ethnic cleansing.
The Palestinian people know that this is only a partial truce and that Zionism can resume its crimes at any moment. Israel has already signed or accepted other “peace agreements,” such as the March 2025 agreement, which it unilaterally broke when it was supposed to withdraw from Gaza. A demonstration of the mendacity and weakness of “Trump’s peace” is that 24 hours after the announcement, Israel is already denouncing a “breach of agreement” because the bodies of the deceased hostages have not been returned. When they know they are under the rubble, next to thousands of Palestinian bodies, the result of Israel’s criminal bombings.
The 20-point plan colonises the Palestinian people because they cannot be annihilated. It is proposed that Gaza be governed by an international committee with “Palestinian technicians” chaired by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Trump himself as a remote consultant.
There are major contradictions. Now, in exchange for the return of the Hamas hostages, it is proposed not to expel the Palestinians from Gaza, when previously they said they had to go to other countries and even offered $5,000 per person to leave. Reverse Trump and Netanyahu’s expulsion plan due to Palestinian resistance, Zionist exhaustion, and global isolation.
He suggests Israel should pull out of Gaza, stop West Bank settlements, and consider a future Palestinian state. In other words, he revives the reactionary utopia of “two states.” Issues that Netanyahu and his Nazi ministers said were unacceptable.
Trump’s plans for the Gaza Strip include a ten-year US-led trust fund and perks for real estate investors for the “reconstruction of Gaza.” Trump’s “peace” is linked to securing a multi-million-dollar business deal, supposedly paid for by the Arab oil monarchies, for the benefit of his “partners,” his son-in-law Jarden Kushner and the US envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, both investors in the construction project.
This new colonisation plan has the support of the European Union (EU), the Arab bourgeois governments (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, and Jordan), and Turkey, among others. Isolated, Hamas did not reject it outright, but said it wants to discuss several points. It said it would not disarm until it had guarantees that Israel would leave Gaza and the West Bank, and that it would only do so in the presence of a genuine Palestinian government. An elegant way of saying no. Will the genocide stop? We don’t believe it. There have been other attempts at pacts, and Israel always broke them.
Why don’t we believe that, even if there is a partial truce, there will be no fundamental solution? Because the genocide began 78 years ago. Israel is not a country; it is an imperialist enclave, an artificial racist creation. Imperialism created this enclave as a spearhead for exploiting the Arab peoples and their oil resources.
There will be no peace until the racist and colonial state of Israel ends and a single, free, secular, democratic, and non-racist Palestine is established, to which the Palestinian diaspora can return, in which Palestinians, whether Muslim, Jewish, or Christian, have the same rights and freedoms.
Therefore, the only way forward is to continue mobilising the people of the world. The IWL-FI calls for mobilisation for the severance of relations with Israel by all governments, and for an artistic, commercial, sports, military, and diplomatic boycott.
Palestine is today the symbol of the struggle of all peoples against imperialist barbarism.
Free Palestine, from the river to the sea. Palestine Will Win.
International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International (IWU-FI)
14 October 2025
